


Painted Wings

by Cones_McMurphy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anastasia inspired AU, Earth? what is Earth, Galra!Keith, I have no idea what Hunk is yet, M/M, Mostly Adventure, Shiro is a god damned amputee and don't you fucking forget it, Some angst, altean!lance, and slow burn romance, but I didn't know how else to make it make sense, but Pidge is Galra and Shiro is Altean, for most of this fic Keith's name isn't Keith, no one in this fic is human, so idk how y'all will feel about that, the galra aren't purple or furry bc I had to imagine Keith while I wrote it, this is a mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 19:03:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11789475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cones_McMurphy/pseuds/Cones_McMurphy
Summary: On the day Galra Emperor Zarkon met with King Alfor of Altea to sign a treaty that would merge their warring planets together, and finally bring peace to their small section of the galaxy, the Altean palace was attacked by rebel fighters. Only young princess Allura and her advisor, Coran survived the massacre.It's been twelve years since that day. The Galactic Alliance of Planets was formed on the ashes of the Galra Empire. The Alliance preaches peace and prosperity, but most people live in dirty slums.Lance McClain is the greatest conman in the Alliance, and he's about to pull off his greatest con yet. He's bringing a dead Galra Prince back to life, with the help of his loyal partner in crime, Hunk Garrett, and a scrappy orphan who goes by the name Red.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is an AU based off the animated movie Anastasia. If you know the movie, basically: Keith is Anya and Lance is Dimitri. I've made some changes, to make it fit in with Voltron a little more.

**Prologue**

 

It happened in a flash. One moment: dancing, laughing, music. The next: fire, ash, and smoke. Coran coughed as he struggled through the burning ballroom. “Princess Allura! King Alfor!” He called, but he heard nothing but the crackle of wood support beams burning. The castle was coming down. Coran could’ve let himself die searching for the Altean Royal family, and he would’ve, if he hadn’t heard a cry from behind him.

“Help! Help me, please!” A child’s voice shrieked in fear. Coran whipped around and saw an eight year old boy with a mop of black hair, cheeks damp with tears. The young Galra prince. Of course.

“Shh,” Coran said, moving towards the boy. “I’ll get you out of here.”

“I-I-I’m stuck!” He wriggled against a part of a wall that had fallen on his leg, and winced in pain. Coran scrambled to lift the piece of wall of the prince’s leg, and pulled the kid into his arms.

“Let’s get out of here, okay?” He asked, and the boy nodded through his tears. Coran felt wobbly running out of the burning castle. He hoped that Allura and Alfor had made it out, that he would find them again. He wished beyond measure that he could stay and look for them, but the prince…The prince had just as much right to be saved as anybody. He was just a child. 

They made it out of the castle just as it collapsed in one final, fiery explosion. If anyone was still in there, they were dead. Coran froze for a moment. His home was gone. _They got out, they had to have gotten out._ Coran looked frantically for them, but all he saw were the rebel soldiers and their blasters. He kept running. He ran until he couldn’t run anymore, still carrying the young prince.

He thought he could lose the soldiers in the crowds of the capitol city. He thought he could, at least, save a future Emperor. But the city was blockaded. He was stopped by a rebel soldier, knocked to the ground by the blunt end of a blaster. There was no way out. He looked at the boy on the ground next to him, whose leg was probably broken, and whose eyes were wide with fear. And then he lunged at the soldier.

_“Run.”_

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Hunk, I have a brilliant idea.” It was a crisp winter morning, an icy wind shook the rusted windows of the abandoned castle they called home. It used to be Galra, back when the Galra Empire still existed, before the revolution. Before the massacre.

Hunk didn’t look up from the chess game he was playing against himself. “Your last brilliant idea nearly got us arrested, Lance.”

“Yes, but this is so much better than that,” Lance McClain was the best conman in the entire Galactic Alliance of Planets. It was all about the sell. He could convince kings to buy dirty socks, if necessary. The key was the delivery. If you believed the garbage you were hawking, so would the poor sucker you were screwing over. This was how Lance had made a name for himself among the criminals of the galaxy. Lance liked to believe that part of his success was in his smile, but that was his ego talking. “Hell, it’s better than any con I’ve ever come up with.”

This seemed to get Hunk’s attention. “Okay, shoot. What’s your brilliant idea?” 

“You know how they never found Prince Keith’s body?” Lance asked, sitting down in front of Hunk. “After the massacre, they found the bodies of every other member of the royal family, but never Prince Keith.” 

“Right…” Hunk furrowed his brow. “So?” 

“So? So, the prince could still be alive!” Lance waved his arms over his head. He’d thought that the con was pretty obvious. 

“So, you want to pretend to be Keith?” Hunk shook his head. “But you’re not Galra. You don’t even _look_ Galra.” That was true. Galra were usually taller than Lance, and they had slightly rounded ears, unlike Lance’s pointed, Altean ears. Not to mention, the purple eyes. But that wasn’t what Lance had in mind.

“No, I’m saying that we should find someone to be Keith. There’s gotta be some starving Galra actor we could hire,” Lance shrugged. “You grew up in the Galra royal court, and my family worked for King Alfor before the massacre. We know a lot more than most people about what it was like back then. I really think we could pull it off.”

“Okay…” Hunk hesitated. “That makes sense. But what do we get out of it?” 

“Princess Allura, dude. I know, travelling outside of Alliance borders is risky business, but she’s gotta be rich. Don’t you think she’d reward us for finding the only other remaining royal?”

“You just want to meet Princess Allura.”

Lance shrugged. “Can you blame me?” 

“No,” Hunk admitted. He paused, considering Lance’s proposal for a moment. When he spoke again, he was firm. “Alright. But only if we find someone who looks _exactly_ like Prince Keith. There’s no half-assing this job.”

Lance grinned. “When have I _ever_ half-assed a job?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

 

* * *

 

Lance groaned and put his face down on the old desk they’d sat at to watch potential princes perform. It turned out, there were a _lot_ of out of work Galra actors who looked like they could be a twenty year old version of the large portrait of eight year old Prince Keith that hung on the wall of throne room of the Galra castle. None of them were quite right. They’d been at it for a week of solid auditions. Eventually, people would figure out that this “acting job” was really a con, and then they’d be screwed. _Maybe this was a bad idea._  

“What if we never find him?” Lance sighed.

“You know we’re not actually looking for Prince Keith, right?” Hunk was joking, but Lance felt himself blush anyway. 

“Yeah—Yeah, of course, of course I know that.”

“Chill. I was teasing.” Hunk put his hands up in a gesture of innocence.

“I know, sorry.” Lance took a sip of his coffee. He'd been cocky this morning and splurged on it. “I’m just tired.”

Hunk rifled through the list of actors on the desk, and sighed. “I think that was the last guy for today, but we have a few more people coming in tomorrow.”

Lance nodded. “First thing in the morning?” By which Lance meant, first thing after waking up at noon.

“Yeah. There’s only three of them. One of them is a little older than Keith would be, if he wasn’t, y’know, definitely dead.” Hunk shrugged. “So, we’ll see.”

“I’m sure he’ll be terrible anyway,” Lance sighed and rubbed his eyes.

“Hey, you never know,” Hunk tried. Lance appreciated the gesture, but he felt incredibly discouraged.

“This is the biggest job we’ve ever done, Hunk,” Lance said, uncharacteristically serious, “Everything has to be perfect, if we want to pull it off. We’re basically brining a prince back from the dead to convince a former princess to give us money for our troubles.” Lance took a breath. “We can’t screw it up.”

“You know, when you put it that way, it sounds kinda bad.”

Lance shrugged. Hunk had always been the moral compass. Lance wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of a situation if it meant surviving another day. Sure, he felt guilty about it, but he tried to target people who could stand to lose a few dollars. Princess Allura may have had her family and friends massacred when she was twelve years old, but she’d managed to hold onto the Altean throne, instead of folding to the Alliance, and she’d retained most of her wealth.

“Look at it this way: we’re giving the princess hope.” 

“I guess.”

“Plus, she’s rich. She can afford to buy our bread and cheese for awhile.”

“That’s true.” Hunk nodded. He still seemed unsure.

Lance pulled down the last drops of his coffee, and crumpled the cup. “Okay, he’s the deal. If we don’t find our prince tomorrow, I’ll let it go.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I mean,” Lance tossed the crumpled cup into the garbage can, “we can’t search for the perfect actor forever.”

“That’s also true.”

“So,” Lance raised an eyebrow, and stuck out his hand to shake, “Deal?” 

“Deal.”


	3. Chapter 3

The orphanage was small, dirty, and instead of beds, the kids all slept on cots, but it was the only home Red had. It was the only home any of them had. _So why are you leaving? You know Shiro would want you to stay._ Red shook his head. _I have to find my family. I have to know where I came from._

Red tiptoed out through the kitchen, and cracked open the back door of the building, but he was stopped by a voice behind him.

“Just where the hell do you think you’re going?” Shiro. _Shit._ Red turned around slowly, but kept the door open.

“I…I have to know where I came from.” 

Shiro sighed. “We talked about this. It doesn’t matter—”

“I know, I know. It doesn’t matter where I came from, what matters is who I am now,” Red rolled his eyes. Shiro frowned. He probably would’ve crossed his arms, if he hadn’t lost an arm during the massacre. Shiro’s father worked in the Altean guard before the massacre. He took his son to work with him that day. Shiro’s father had lost his life. Shiro had lost an arm. 

“Look. It’s dangerous out there. The Alliance likes to pretend that they made things better with their revolution, but look around, Red. There might not be a war, but people are starving in the streets. Good people have turned to crime just to survive.”

Red’s shoulders fell. “I know, but…I can take care of myself.”

“Just because you have a knife—”

“I’m twenty years old, Shiro! I’m not a child!” Red snapped. 

“I know. I just don’t want anything to happen to you.” Shiro’s frown deepened.

“I have to do this. I have to find my family.”

“I thought _I_ was your family.” There was hurt in Shiro’s voice, an uncharacteristic crack in his façade. “I thought we were brothers. Isn’t that why we both stayed here as caregivers after we turned eighteen? To stay together?”

Red felt guilt bubbling up in his chest. Nothing that Shiro said was untrue. Shiro was the closest thing that Red had to a family. It was Shiro who found him, eight years old, wandering alone with a broken leg and no memory of where he came from or who he was. It was Shiro who brought him back to the orphanage, who gave him a bowl of porridge and some bread. It was twelve year old Shiro who gave him his damn name when Red couldn’t remember the name he was born with. Red was wearing a tattered red coat with the Royal Galra Crest on the breast when Shiro found him, so Shiro took to calling him Red.

It just kind of stuck. 

“I know, I-I’m sorry, Shiro.” He was. “But I need to do this. I need to know where I came from. I need to know.”

“So you’re just going to wander around on that bad leg of yours and see if anyone recognizes you?” Shiro almost seemed angry, but…that couldn’t be right. Shiro never lost control.

“I’m going to find Voltron,” Red said definitely. Voltron was the one clue he had to his past. It was the only thing he remembered. He had no idea what or who it was. But it was something.

“Red…” Shiro sighed. He clearly realized that he wasn’t going to talk Red out of leaving. “Will you come back?”

“Maybe someday,” Red couldn’t bring himself to meet Shiro’s eye. “But I don’t know how long this will take.”

Shiro nodded. “Well, then, I guess this is goodbye.” 

Red hated how final that sounded, but he couldn’t really argue. “Thank you, Shiro. For everything.”

“Is this where you tell me you’ll never forget it, because I don’t know if I believe that, coming from you?” Shiro smiled, but Red could tell it was forced.

“That’s a low blow,” he bantered back anyway, inching his way out the door.

Shiro chuckled. “Good luck, Red.” 

“Good bye, Shiro.”

And then Red was outside, alone, in the middle of the night. He didn’t know where to go, but he knew there was no going back. His best bet was probably going to be trying to make it to the old capital city. It wasn’t the capital anymore, but it was still a big city. He walked for hours, even when his leg throbbed with pain, and he was reduced to limping. He didn’t come to the city until well after dawn had broke. He thought he might collapse from fatigue. He couldn’t just sleep on the streets, though. He’d probably get robbed. Or murdered.

_This was a stupid idea. Stupid and reckless and impulsive. Shiro was right._

And then he saw it. The old Galra castle, which, to his knowledge, had been abandoned twelve years ago, after the revolution. According to everyone he’d ever spoken to, the castle remained unused and in tact as a reminder of…history? Or something? Red didn’t really care. It was shelter. And big shelter at that. He would definitely find a place to hide and sleep in the castle. He kicked in one of the boarded up walls of the castle.

The first room he came upon must’ve been a ballroom. There was something…familiar about it. Like something out of a dream. He wandered out of the ballroom and up the stairs, past a portrait of the last Galra royals. His eyes lingered on the painted faces. Something in him recognized them. He longed to reach out and touch dusty canvasses. _No_ , he shook his head. _I’m being ridiculous._ He made his way to the top of the stairs on shaky footing, looking for a place to hide and sleep. 

Everything in the castle felt like a hazy dream from years ago. It was all distantly familiar, but not in a concrete, solid way. He made his way past a decorative table covered with cobwebs and dust. He brushed off some dust and saw the same crest that adorned the red jacket he’d be wearing when Shiro found him. 

 _Maybe this_ is _where I come from._

He pulled himself down a long hallway to a room with a lock on the door. Perfect. He picked the lock and was in the room in seconds. It looked to be something of an office: a desk covered in messy paperwork, what looked to be a myriad of false documentation, and uncapped pens. There was a smaller table, with a chess board on top, and a couple of rickety looking chairs.

Whoever used this office would be back eventually, but nothing about the room felt threatening to Red. And he was so tired. He used his knapsack as a pillow, and curled up under the big desk, his mind still full of the familiar faces of the Galra royal family, and his old red jacket.

_Where do I belong?_


	4. Chapter 4

Lance groaned as he left the ballroom where they ran the auditions. The last three potential princes were all awful. It was hopeless. They were never going to be able to pull off this con. Hunk was right. Lance didn’t know why he was so invested in finding the perfect Prince Keith. Sure, it would be the biggest con in the last century, but Lance was certain he could come up with something else just as great, if he gave himself more time. But there was something about this that felt personal.

He did grow up as a servant to Altean royalty. He’d even met Prince Keith a few times, when the Galra royals had come for peace talks. Or, rather, watched him from across the hall, fascinated by the grandeur of the young prince’s lifestyle, until one of the adult servants yelled at him to get back to work. He missed being a kid. Being a servant wasn't the best gig, but at least he’d still had his family.

The royals weren’t the only ones killed in the massacre.

Lance made his way down the corridor and back to the office, Hunk in tow. Late afternoon sun poked in through the spaces between the boards on the windows.

“I’m sorry, Lance,” Hunk frowned. “I know this was important to you.”

“Eh.” Lance plastered a fake smile on his face. “I’ll just have to think of a better idea.”

“Lance.” Hunk was buying it. As usual. This was why they were best friends. 

“Look, can we just let it go?” Lance reached into his pocket for the office key.

“Okay,” Hunk nodded, “But I’m here, if you change your mind.”

“I know.” Lance finally found the office key among the odds and ends in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out and jammed it into the door to find that the office was unlocked. _That_ was weird. “I locked this before we left, right?”

Hunk just shrugged.

“I swear, I locked this. Something’s not right.” Lance leaned down and reached for the small blade he kept tied to his ankle: the only weapon small enough to get past any guard. And then he slowly opened the door.

And he came face to face with a sleeping boy. He couldn’t have been much older than Lance, and given his tattered clothes and bony frame, he was probably homeless. Lance slid his blade back into his shoe. Whoever he was, he just needed a place to sleep. Still. This was _Lance’s_ place to work. He didn’t like the idea of someone else in his space. He had to make it clear that the guy was unwelcome.

“HEY” He yelled, startling the boy awake. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY OFFICE?! GET THE HELL OUT.”

The boy scrambled to his feet and grabbed a thread barren knapsack he’d been using as a pillow. With his eyes open, glowing purple and bright, Lance could see that the boy was Galra. He was attractive, too, if sloppy mullets were your thing.

“I just needed a place to sleep,” the boy sneered. “You don’t have to be such a dick about it.”

“You’re squatting!”

“As opposed to what you’re doing?” the boy scoffed and raised an eyebrow. “Or do you actually own this castle?”

“Touché.” Lance sighed. “Please, just get out. I’m not in the mood for any of this.” 

“Fine, fine.” He grumbled out something that sounded like a curse and headed for the door.

“See ya never!” Lance called after him.

The boy had made it halfway down the hall, when he turned back to Lance with an eye roll. “You’re out of your mind.”

Lance turned to Hunk, “The nerve of that guy, am I right? We better make sure he actually leaves.” 

“You’re so dramatic.” But Hunk followed Lance down the hall and toward the stairs. 

“Hey, he could’ve messed with your chess set.” From the top of the stairs Lance could see that the boy was standing in front of the portrait of the royal family.

Hunk’s eyes widened. “Okay, we’ve got to get a better lock.”

They walked down the stairs to where the boy stood, staring up at the aged painting with a kind of wonder that Lance had never seen before. It didn’t stop him from noticing that Lance and Hunk were following him.

“Oh, what is it now?” The boy snapped, turning around so the painting was behind him. Lance froze. The boy stood right under the likeness of young Prince Keith and he…He looked _exactly_ like it. 

“Hunk…Do you see what I see?”

“He looks…” Hunk trailed off. “I never thought… _”_

It felt surreal that the puzzle piece they needed to pull off this con had fallen right into their laps. He was _perfect._

“What? Why are you staring at me?” The boy crossed his arms defensively.

“It’s just that you look just like Prince Keith.”

“I do?”

“Yeah,” Lance nodded. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“People call me Red, but uh,” he looked askance. “I don’t remember what my actual name is. Not that it’s any of your business, but they found me, wandering around in the cold when I was eight years old. I have no memory of who I was before that.” 

Lance blinked twice. “Wow.”

“Why do you care, anyway?”

“Well, Red,” Lance started carefully. If he didn’t sell this right, the whole con fell apart. “We just happened to be looking for Prince Keith.”

“Prince Keith is dead, just like all the other royals.”

“They never found his body. A few people survived the attacks.”

“I…” The boy seemed to consider it. “I guess that’s true.”

“And you look just like him. It’s uncanny.” 

“Are you saying that _I’m_ Prince Keith? That’s ridiculous.” 

“Why is it ridiculous?”

“I’m—I’m nobody! I’m a nameless little orphan! I’m not a prince!”

“You said it yourself, you don’t remember where you came from.”

“I know, but—”

“So, who’s to say you’re not royalty?” Lance flashed his best smile. “Come with us to Altea, to see Princess Allura. If she remembers you, you’ll know where you came from. If not, you’ve crossed a possibility off the list.”

“You want me to follow complete strangers to the _only_ planet in the quadrant that isn’t part of the Alliance, to ask a princess if she remembers me from when she was twelve years old?” 

“Well, when you put it that way—” 

“I’m in.”


End file.
